


Vera's Girls

by quillandsaber



Series: Learning to Love [2]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Hospitalization, historically-accurate paternalistic managerial behavior, romance or friendship? YOU DECIDE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-20
Updated: 2017-07-20
Packaged: 2018-12-04 16:58:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11559510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quillandsaber/pseuds/quillandsaber
Summary: The things he'd do for Vera's girls.





	Vera's Girls

**Author's Note:**

> You are warned: Graves is a (well-meaning) paternalistic, patronizing ass here. If historically-accurate benevolent sexism is intolerable to you, you will not like this. At all. Note as well that Graves is described in the script as "middle-aged"; I'm choosing to interpret that as later forties.
> 
> Special thanks to Melissa and KatieHavok for the beta help!

Percival Graves had always avoided hospitals to the best of his ability. He didn't like the smell, and the echoing sterile tiles made him jumpy. The ventilation from the huge windows and doors was supposedly good for the sick and injured, but it was too open, too difficult to defend in case of attack. Even being in a private room with lockable doors didn't make him feel much better. No, he was far from comfortable in Steward Memorial.

But the things he'd do for Vera's girls.

It made him feel old and tired. He remembered the girls' mother as a classmate and dear friend—bright and vivacious Vera Herschel, then, before she'd married Benjamin Goldstein—dead tragically young from something that wasn't supposed to kill people anymore. He remembered tiny baby Porpentina Esther with disconcertingly-deep eyes that made him even less comfortable than babies normally did (thank God for the bachelor life free of infants). Vera's oldest girl shouldn't be old enough to be an Auror, _definitely_ shouldn't be old enough to be in a hospital bed looking like she'd been pulled from the gaping maw of Hell and got caught on the teeth on her way out.

"Mr. Graves? I got coffee."

Percival stood up from the unsteady hospital-issue visitor's stool to see Queenie standing with two plain hospital-issue mugs, eyes dark with worry and lack of sleep and hair falling out of curl. Poor girl; she'd been trying to keep things together for the few times Tina came to, but the vigil was wearing on her.

"Thanks, Queenie," he mumbled, taking one of the mugs.

"Any change?"

"She hasn't had a shivering fit since you left, seems to be sleeping. The healer said that curse would probably wear off on its own today."

Queenie nodded, biting her lower lip.

"Tina might be getting a visitor soon," the blonde said haltingly. "Mr. Scamander, Newt Scamander. He was planning to visit soon anyways since he's in eastern Canada, but considering the circumstances…"

"I see." Percival might not have Queenie's mind-reading powers, but he wouldn't have gotten where he was if he weren't observant. When Theseus Scamander suddenly became exceedingly curious about Tina's side of the story the second he heard who she'd been with during the Barebone Incident, he noticed. When Tina started carrying around a photograph in her pocket and pulling it out when she thought no one was looking, he noticed. "I'll leave you be with her for a while, then." He guided Queenie by the shoulder to the stool—she was far too biddable, she needed to get some decent sleep before long or there'd be two Goldstein patients in the hospital instead of one—leaving the room once he was certain she was balanced enough on the vigil seat at Tina's bedside.

Percival paced slowly down Steward Memorial's long, open hallways towards the entrance hall, working on his cup of coffee. It wasn't the best cup of coffee he'd ever had—hospital coffee was only a marginal step up from office coffee—but it, along with the walk, was clearing his head, and that's what he needed it to do. Being in this hospital wasn't any better for his nerves than it was for Queenie's, except he had to keep a brave face on things no matter what. Vera would want him to do that.

As the exhausted director finally made his way through the ward doors into the hospital entryway, a red-headed man on the younger end of adulthood was hustling towards the reception desk, arriving just as Percival got within hearing distance.

"Excuse me, I'm here to visit a friend in room 213, Porpentina Goldstein?" British accent; that had to be the younger Scamander. It seemed like luck was with Percival today, for once.

Percival had met Theseus Scamander during the War and liked him. Good kid, good friend, good Auror. The younger brother didn't look a thing like a good Auror, but if the same parents turned out them both, chances were good he was decent. Careless, yes, if the summaries he'd read about the Barebone Incident were to be believed, but decent enough that Vera wouldn't have hexed him out the door if he'd come calling. And careless could be fixed. Percival slipped his coffee cup behind a potted plant—it was much harder to look intimidating when holding a coffee cup—and stalked his way towards the front desk.

"Mr. Newton Scamander." At hearing his name, the younger man instantly looked over, and Percival took the opportunity to look him up and down, walking towards him like a predator sizing up potential prey. He had to be at least twenty-six to have a War record, but he still looked like a teenager who'd outgrown his trousers. Hopefully he had more of a brain than most teenagers; Vera would have told Tina to kick him to the curb if he were that much of an idiot. "That the case?" Percival's eyes settled on the nondescript, battered suitcase the Brit had gripped in his hand.

The younger man stared, blinking owlishly at him. "No. Well, it is _a_ case, but not _the_ case."

"Hmm." Percival took a step back, jerking his head toward an open door behind him. The room was apparently set aside for consultations between doctors and family members—he had checked every publicly-accessible room in the entire hospital over the last three days when he wasn't sitting with Tina, just to satisfy his paranoia—but he wouldn't be requisitioning it for long. Luckily, this Mr. Scamander wasn't as foolish as he looked, and he dutifully headed towards the room.

As soon as they were both inside, Percival shut the door behind them. "I don't know much about you, Mr. Scamander," he said, circling around the befuddled wizard, "but I know you're reckless and don't stay in a single place for more than three weeks at a time."

Newton Scamander blinked. "Forgive me, but I fail to see how that is relevant."

"If one of my best Aurors has to go back to issuing wand permits because you got her into trouble, that makes it very relevant." The younger man looked half shocked, half confused, and Percival pushed his advantage. "Now, I don't know how you do things in your country, Mr. Scamander, but here in America, men who get girls into trouble do the right thing. Even with girls who don't have living fathers to look out for them."

"I wouldn't-"

"I'm a realist, Mr. Scamander," Percival shook his head slowly; he wasn't interested in moral arguments. The era of a gentleman's word being his bond was long over, and he could not care less if this man considered it an insult that Percival refused to pretend like it wasn't, not when one of Vera's girls was at stake. "Trouble happens even with the best intentions, it's always happened, and no amount of modernity is going to stop it. But you should know something: the people in my office put their lives on the line every day for the sake of this country, and I'll put mine on the line for them. I don't give a damn that your brother is the best Auror in Britain. If you get Tina into trouble and _don't_ do the right thing, I will hunt you down even if it means Apparating to Tibet, and you will be begging for the Killing Curse by the time I'm done with you. That, Mr. Scamander, is a promise."

Mr. Scamander looked down, his lips tightening for a second before he nodded, seemingly to himself. When he realized Percival wasn't going to say anything more, he readjusted his grip on his suitcase, turning towards the door.

As he placed his hand on the doorknob, he stopped.

"Mr. Graves, you should know that British wizards hold themselves to the same minimum standards of decency as our American brethren." His voice may have been gentle (too gentle, in Percival's opinion, for a man who'd been to war), but there was that edge, that steel that Theseus Scamander had in spades that Percival knew the younger one had to have hidden somewhere. "And that if I were to completely put aside my moral convictions and get Miss Goldstein into trouble at all, you can depend upon my brother queuing up behind you."

"Then we understand each other."

"Quite."

Percival stared at the door as the younger Mr. Scamander left the office, chewing on the inside of his cheek as he thought. Perhaps...perhaps the young man wouldn't be too bad, if he didn't run for the hills after that threat. He'd have to wait and see, of course, but it would be interesting to watch…and he _would_ watch. Vera would haunt him forever if he didn't.

Before he walked out of the hospital, Percival had two notes left at the reception desk. The first was for the hospital staff, letting them know that Newton Scamander was to be permitted family-level visitation rights unless either of the Miss Goldsteins rescinded them. The other was for Queenie, letting her know he'd be away that evening on business and to contact him through the MACUSA Auror Office if Tina's condition suddenly worsened. Fates willing, he'd be back in the country in the morning to see a significantly healthier, significantly _happier_ Tina Goldstein.

* * *

"Spoke with your brother today," Percival said, taking the proffered glass.

Theseus Scamander paused in surprise in the middle of turning to pour his own drink. It was rare to see Theseus so demonstrative—the man could have easily passed as an automaton under ordinary circumstances—but in his own parlor he wasn't hiding behind his normal artificial walls. "He's in America?"

"He was an hour ago at least," the older man said. "Tina Goldstein nearly got killed in a raid last week, and her sister summoned him to the sickbed."

Theseus's brows knit almost imperceptibly. "How is she now?"

"She's on the mend," Percival said, taking a draft of the scotch and soda. Salem's fires, if only they could get this stuff in the states. "I don't know how fully she'll recover, but she'll be alive enough to be a Mrs. Scamander one day if that's what she wants and if I didn't scare him away. Oh—should have told you, I've warned him that I'm duty-bound to track him to the ends of the earth if he gets her into trouble and doesn't do right by her. Nothing personal meant."

"Nothing personal interpreted," Theseus returned, taking a mouthful of his own drink. "You think his intentions are that serious, though?"

"Seems like he is with how quickly he came running; he must've started Apparating the second he got the owl. Why...you have any objections?"

"None at all! I like her," Theseus said simply. "She's got enough sense to keep his head from floating to the moon to look for magical rabbits and enough softness to keep him from feeling shackled to the ground. There aren't many women like that in the world."

Percival smiled into his whiskey glass. "I know. Her mother was the exact same way."

**Author's Note:**

> In case it wasn't clear, getting a woman "into trouble" was a 1920s euphemism for conceiving a child with her out of wedlock. Men who created such a situation would "do the right thing" by marrying the mother of the unborn child.


End file.
